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[MarcAFK]

Or the ultimate insult, A coin showing a pile of "Belgian fries"

[mainiac]

Not entirely true, the Sitzkrieg was pretty much a case of letting the Germans have breathing room.

It's only giving them breathing room if time isn't on your side.

Every day that the war dragged on was a day that the Petite Entente grew stronger and that Germany grew closer to collapse.  The French hadn't just sat on their assess since the first world war, they had created an economic defense plan that would let them produce ever greater quantities of newer weapons at a steady and sustainable rate for years.  The kept industry crucial men out of the army and could feed themselves indefinitely.  France also had half the gold bullion in the world and could sustain a war for about a year and a half based solely on american imports paid with gold and foreign reserve assets for about a year.  And of course they had qualitative superiority over the Germans in general, better planes, better tanks, much better artillery (the weapon that caused half of casualties).  Germany on the other hand was going to need to start reducing it's army size in about nine months or else they wouldn't be able to feed themselves while continuing to make the deliveries to the Soviets and Romanians to trade for war vital materials.  In absolutely crucial industries like railway rolling stock Germany had a severe deficit as a result of an economy that was drafting resources from industry in a haphazard fashion.

All of these Germans deficiencies disappeared because Gamelin made such a monumental blunder.  France collapsed suddenly and Germany suddenly could loot all of Europe.  They looted valuables and industrial crucial machines from France.  They were free to use military blackmail on Hungary and Romania to get desperately needed agriculture and oil.  Rationing was the order of the day in France, the Low countries, the Nordics and eastern Europe and it's this rationing that freed up resources for the Nazi war machine.  All of it was made possible because Gamelin didn't leave just another division or two at Sedan to cover his flank.

It's very tragic in the classical sense.  Without that one crucial mistake you are looking at a war that would have killed maybe a million men and would have resulted in a democratic victory over Germany with eastern Europe still free.  Instead people died by the tens of millions and we got the cold war.

[Erkki]

Additionally, Japan would have never joined the tripartite pact. Potentially 23-ish million less dead.

[10ebbor10]

I thought the Belgian ones fell due to lack of air cover or something? Though the Germans figuring out how to defeat them certainly didn't help.

Yup.

Eben-Emael fell because rather than install a forest and barbed wire on top of the fortress as originally planned, they installed a football field, which was an excellent landing site for the German assault troops.

The other Belgian fortresses surrendered as they were surrounded after the main army retreated, either because their guns were destroyed by air raids, or simply because they ran out of ammunition.

[MarcAFK]

Well Germans do love football, so it was nice of the French to make their invaders feel welcome.

[Sheb]

Eben-Emael is in Belgium.

[Helgoland]

It's difficult to tell the difference when driving a tank, I guess.

[MarcAFK]

It's difficult to tell the difference when driving a tank, I guess.

But I'm driving a pig.

[Helgoland]

What does revving the pig's engine sound like?

[Sheb]

That reminds me of that stupid idea I had at breakfast a couple weeks ago when I noticed that bacon contract when cooked, and that it should be possible to make a horrendously inefficient but delicious bacon engine.

[MarcAFK]

That reminds me of that stupid idea I had at breakfast a couple weeks ago when I noticed that bacon contract when cooked, and that it should be possible to make a horrendously inefficient but delicious bacon engine.

The hard part is to uncook the bacon so the process can repeat.
The man who unboiled an egg

What does revving the pig's engine sound like?

Like sizzling bacon.

[Sheb]

What? No, you just need to replace the bacon strip at each cycle. Think of bacon as part of the fuel.

[Guardian G.I.]

Can any Deutsch folks here verify this?
RT's Russian-language service claims that German authorities want to close a local private television station for transmitting 'Russian propaganda' (a German-language program made by RT). They link to this article by Thuringer Allgemeine to prove their words.

[Sergarr]

That reminds me of that stupid idea I had at breakfast a couple weeks ago when I noticed that bacon contract when cooked, and that it should be possible to make a horrendously inefficient but delicious bacon engine.

Those already sort-of exist; they're called "muscles" 

[Helgoland]

Can any Deutsch folks here verify this?
RT's Russian-language service claims that German authorities want to close a local private television station for transmitting 'Russian propaganda' (a German-language program made by RT). They link to this article by Thuringer Allgemeine to prove their words.

I couldn't read the RT article of course, but all the Thüringer Allgemeine article says is that the Landesmedienanstalt (the Bundesland's agency for media - a state agency as opposed to a federal one) has started an 'examination'. Apparently they pulled some shit before, basically having done 'court coverage' (Hofberichterstattung - news from the king's court in a lapdog manner) for Thüringen's premier.

Here's a rather more extensive FAZ article. It appears they are financed by the German taxpayer, so the RT article must've been... misleading, to say it the polite way. Propagandist lies on the level of the 20th century totalitarian regimes would be a more accurate one.

E: You know they've gone too far when even Die Linke (the successor of the SED, the GDR's totalitarian ruling party!) is against you. The whole situation is especially interesting because Thüringen is the first Bundesland with a Die Linke premier - honi soit qui mal y pense...